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samcol · 10-21-2007, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Perhaps those who you suggest are "missing a few screws" have a different interpretation of the powers of Congress under "general welfare clause" than you and Ron Paul:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;

The Supreme Court has never interpreted the powers of Congress to be limited to those enumerated below this opening clause in sec 8....On the other hand, the Court has affirmed the broader interpretation of the "general welfare" clause (in at lease one case re: social security).

So, on the basis of constitutional law, Ron Paul's position on the constitutionality of the "limited" (only those enumerated) powers of the federal government is "missing a few screws."

Well the authors of said document would disagree with you. That phrase is a preamble and the following are specific powers that the congress has to achieve the stated goal of providing 'general welfare' to the United States. Everything after that clause would be totally redundant if it means what you say it does.

Why would the people, who designed a government based on limited powers and checks and balances, give congress the ability to raise money for whatever they thought fit in that clause (basically a blank check)? Plus their own writings refute your interpretation of their intent.

Quote:

James Madison on the General Welfare Clause
Money cannot be applied to the General Welfare, otherwise than by an application of it to some particular measure conducive to the General Welfare. Whenever, therefore, money has been raised by the General Authority, and is to be applied to a particular measure, a question arises whether the particular measure be within the enumerated authorities vested in Congress. If it be, the money requisite for it may be applied to it; if it be not, no such application can be made. - James Madison

James Madison, Report on Resolutions[/URL], in 6 WRITINGS OF JAMES MADISON, quoted in Roger Pilon, Freedom, Responsibility, and the Constitution: On Recovering Our Founding Principles, 68 Notre Dame L. Rev. 507, 530.

Thomas Jefferson on the General Welfare Clause
[O]ur tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin (June 16, 1817), in 10 WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON at 90, 91 (Paul Leicester Ford ed., 1899) quoted in Roger Pilon, Freedom, Responsibility, and the Constitution: On Recovering Our Founding Principles, 68 Notre Dame L. Rev. 507, 530.